Monday, July 26, 2010

Dr Frankenstein

I decided that I'd try the Robotics career. It seemed like a fun path to choose where I wouldn't be disturbed by the general chaos that usually goes on out in the hallways. I'd done my research and set off to make my first robot.

The robotics laboratory

I found the robotics lab and started by throwing metal plates into the robotic fashioning machine. I built all the necessary parts, legs, arms, head, frame and body and attempted to put them all together. When I got to the body, it said I needed wire. There was a coil of cable in there but I tried to use that and even cut off a piece using wire cutters but kept having problems. I looked it up in the wiki and discovered that there were wires under the floorboards that kept the ship pulsing with delicious electricity. A couple of crowbar smashes later and a snip with the wire cutters and I'm a quivering mess having had thousands of volts rip through my body. Fortunately the captain was walking by who gave me a stern telling off for wrecking his ship, revived me and fixed my floor boards. After I explained my reasoning for this vandalism, he said that the cable I had would be good enough and that I was just doing it wrong. I tried again and this time used the wires on the body part rather than the frame. That seemed to work so I then added a battery pack, two flash bulbs for the eyes and voila, I have built my first robot shell.

The next thing I needed to do was to "acquire" a human brain. That meant venturing out and seeing if there happened to be any "willing" subjects in the ship. I'd see if there were any dead bodies lying around the ship or at least unconscious (which isn't all that uncommon). If worst came to worst, I'd have to be willing to kill for a good brain too which I was prepared to do in the name of science. I armed myself with a scalpel and circular saw and headed out.

There were plenty of people milling around in the corridors and a few blood stains so I was fairly hopeful. I decided to do a couple of laps around the station first and then reevaluate if I was unsuccessful. Eurika! I come accross a body with "dull, lifeless eyes" who I then started to drag through the corridors.

One of the great things about this profession is that I'm one of the only people who might have a reason for dragging dead bodies around the ship whilst wearing bloodied gloves.

I got him back to the lab without any questions asked, put him on the table and used my tools to remove his brain! After inserting the brain into the robot, I am now the proud owner of Cyborg 713! IT'S ALIVEEEE!

Or not...

Unfortunately, the brain you use has to have an active player and it seemed like when the player was killed in the corridor earlier, he must've quit or gone away from his keyboard so he just stood there. So I have no idea if I was successful.

That didn't stop me though, I decided to make a floorbot next who repairs floor tiles. That was a much quicker build and all the tools I needed were available to me in the lab. After I fired him up, he happily blooped at me ran around the office! Again, he didn't repair the floor tile I'd broken for him but I wonder if it was out of his line of sight.

So anyway, I'll definitely be trying this career again. It has lots of possibilities for the future. And now that I know the basics, things should go a bit smoother (I also had trouble getting the corpse on the operating table and making sure I wasn't just stabbing it in the chest with my scalpel instead of surgically removing his brain). I'll also try to get more screenshots in the future so you can see me electricuted on the floor or see the blood splattered everywhere etc.